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- Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture
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Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Global Music Series, 1)
Bonnie C. Wade
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Teaching Music Globally: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture and Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture: Package: Includes 2 books, 1 CD (Global Music Series)
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Music in West Africa: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Global Music Series)
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Music in Japan: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Global Music Series)
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Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Global Music Series)
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Music in Brazil: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture Includes CD (Global Music Series)
ASIN: 0195136640 |
Book Description
Thinking Musically is the central volume in the Global Music Series. Designed for undergraduates and general readers with little or no background in music, it incorporates music from many diverse cultures--including the Americas, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Europe--and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure--covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present--and comes with an audio CD of musical examples discussed in the text. The case studies can be used in any combination with Thinking Musically to provide a rich exploration of world musical cultures. Visit www.oup.com/us/globalmusic for a list of case studies in the series. The website also includes instructional materials to accompany each study. Thinking Musically discusses the importance of musical instruments, describing their significance in a culture's folklore, religion, and history. It explores fundamental elements of music--including rhythm, pitch in melodic and harmonic relationships, and form--and examines how they vary in different musical traditions. The text considers the effects of cultural influences such as gender and ethnicity on the perception, interpretation, and performance of music. It also looks at how the forces of nationalism, acculturation, and westernization can affect musical traditions. Many of the musical examples are coordinated with material in the case studies. Thinking Musically includes activities designed to build critical listening and individual study skills and is packaged with an 80-minute CD that features selections from a wide variety of musical cultures. Also available: Thinking Musically and Teaching Music Globally Package (2 books + CD; ISBN 0-19-517143-8) Thinking Musically is also available in a package with Teaching Music Globally, by Patricia Shehan Campbell, a second framing volume in the Global Music Series. Essential for anyone teaching beginning students about the world's musical cultures, Teaching Music Globally describes pedagogical techniques for classes from K-12 to university level and offers a wealth of learning experiences.
Customer Reviews:
Thinking Musically: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture.......2007-07-27
Writing such an ethnomusicological monograph is not easy. I am happy with what Thinking Musically has achieved. The CD that comes with the book helps a great deal to widen my horizen on music of all peoples.
Book Description
A fascinating new introduction to music of the world's peoples, as seen from the vantage point of its function: music for dance, for the home, for worship, for political purposes, and others. W. W. Norton proudly presents Soundscapes, the first textbook to organize the study of music the way most people encounter it—by the roles it plays in their lives and communities. Through a series of illuminating case studies, students learn the fundamentals of music by exploring the social and cultural settings of different "soundscapes" —that is, musical traditions—from around the world, all of which either migrated to or originated in North America. The text embraces the diverse musical identities, tastes, and sound worlds present in our society and encourages students to participate in the soundscapes that surround them.
Customer Reviews:
Worldly.......2004-12-11
This is a very good, thorough book. It explains music of all countries, tying the music together quite well. The music from the listening guides was very helpful in understanding what she was talking about. I just wish I could find the CD's that came with the book.
My only complaint is that she did not go into any Classical, rap, pop, or Broadway music. These are very important to world music, and I was surprised to see that she did not include them.
All in all, its a great book that has interesting and educational topics.
Book Description
Operas are about the meaning of love and life, and also very much about the meaning of death. Opera as a form, however, might even be dead itself. The last great operas are said to be those written around 1900.
But, the psychoanalytic critic and philosopher Slavoj Zizek is quick to point out, 1900 is also the year in which Freud 'invents' psychoanalysis. Can this be a coincidence? Opera's Second Death is a passionate exploration of opera---the genre, its masterpieces, and the nature of death. Using a dazzling array of tools, Slavoj Zizek and coauthor Mladen Dolar explore the strange compulsions that overpower characters in Mozart and Wagner, as well as our own desires to die and to go to the opera.
Mozart's understanding of psychoanalysis and Wagner's sense of humor are but two of the many surprises in Zizek and Dolar's operatic tour de force. Opera's Second Death is an extended aria on a subject that is far from dead.
Customer Reviews:
leads you backstage into places opera don't know.......2005-05-01
Opera is perhaps the most perfect subject for Zizek's gaze with Hegelian negations and Absolutes Lacan's "object petit a,"Four Discourses" in the Master Signifier, the divided self,desire, don't be scared away for the cloistered world of opera can use such insights to help clarify its own anxieties self-indulgences and excesses throughout its histories. In fact opera now cannot live without someone speaking about it deeply as Zizek does, especially the self-conscious dimensions in Wagner's dramas, the negations of the negations(from Hegel) as "Parsifal" a redeemer redeeming the redemption,or dealing with "Other" those aspects that we wish we could do without but are there anyways, like feminist extremism not wanting man to be around,as in Carmen, or Tosca, or Wotan not wanting to be responsible for his pacts carved on his staff. Zizek and Dolar both bring a formidable array of concepts to opera to make some illuminations clearer I think. If you simply want opera to go on as it is without comment, simply sit back and let it wash over your brain, well this is not a book for you.
Opera on the Couch.......2002-04-02
To those who love opera and know nothing about psychoanalysis or philosophy this book will be challenging and probably incomprehensible. Still, if anyone can get an Opera Queen to think, it might be Slavoj Zizek and Mladen Dolar. Dolar's is a more conventional and comprehensive treatment of the history of opera as a history of ideas. It is excellent and one can almost read the copious notes as a separate and equally enjoyable experience. Zizek uses particular operas to explain profound and fascinating ideas about love and death, narcissism and self-destruction, through the ideas (among others) of Lacan and Hegel. Ever since Zizek's seminal books explaining the complexities of Lacan and Hegel through popular entertainment he has accrued fame in intellectual circles without ever becoming pompous or complacent. He makes for enjoyable and provocative reading and chances are, after you've read him, you'll be keeping an eye out for his next book.
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- Musicking is Relational--Refutes idea of "absolute music"
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Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Music/Culture)
Christopher Small
Manufacturer: Wesleyan University Press
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Music, Society, Education (Music/Culture)
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The Cultural Study of Music
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Music in Everyday Life
ASIN: 0819522570 |
Book Description
Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower.
Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.
Customer Reviews:
Musicking is Relational--Refutes idea of "absolute music".......2004-10-08
According to Small, there is no such thing as "music." "Music" is a abstract reification of what is fundamentally of a process--'musicking.' Moreover, the term "music" is not held in hegemonic circles to be just *any* product of a process, but rather the product of the process of producing what is known as Western classical music. This music is today commonly perceived as being absolute or autonomous--self-contained, and when performed is performed only in the sense that the performance is judged against an abstract perfected Platonic-like form of the work in question. All performances, are therefore, approximations only of some ur-essence of the piece. The essence of the work (if such can be said to exist) in this paradigm lies in the notated score, which has assumed an inviolate sacredness since the 19th century unknown to previous paradigms (or other current ones) of musicking.
But Small, as I said, wishes to challenge this. What we need, instead, says Small--is to resort to the verb -"to music." To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, listening, by rehearsing, or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is commonly called composition), or by dancing. This is true for active participation or passive participation, and Small means it in a descriptive, not prescriptive sense. To take part, is for Small, the important aspect over all--for it refers to the forging of relationships.
Small discusses at length the structure and evolution of modern spaces in which Western classical music is musicked. As the repertory has fossilized, modern orchestras have doubled since WWII. These spaces are built, especially in developing countries and growing metropolitian areas, as signals that these communities have reached a certain threshold of intellectual and cultural "development." Not only do these buildings rise as a sign of certain attitudes and assumptions about the world, they enforce those codes for others in the community---that classical music is a sui generis cultural form in its own right. Also, these halls typically enforce a kind of continuity with European past, particularly Renaissance or Ancient past. Not too many Gothic music halls.
Typically the space has a portion devoted to purchasing tickets (permission to enter this space) and to pick up tickets already purchased--which is the preferred entrance method culturally. There are at least two spaces inside--one smaller one designed for standing and talking, seeing and being seen. The other is very large, opulent, and designed for individual ceremonial seating--to inspire a sense of grandeur. Concert hall seating is designed to inscribe a one-way enclosed directional flow of value, rather than a reciprocal or multivalent direction, as in other forms of musicking. There are no outside windows in a Concert Hall. This is certainly different than in previous centuries, where this music would be played as part of a lively social scene which included many other facets.
Here in this new Concert space, the past is visited always in terms of the present. Rather than the historical past, we visit a mythical, idealized past through concert ritual---Small refers to it as a "theme park" made safe through canonization of works, bits and pieces of biography, and smug, safe distance.
One of the most significant contributions Small brings to the musicking table is his discussion of the anthropologist Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind. In a refutation of Cartesian dualism, Bateson postulates that in their ability to respond and adjust to information received from their environment, all organisms have the property of mind. Thus, wherever there are patterns of matter called life, there is mind. In giving and responding to information, organisms shape their environments and each other, just as they are shaped by their environment and each other. These exchanges of information and respsonse creates a network of relationships that all activties of life and its environment are embedded in. Knowledge constitutes a relationship between knower and known--certainly interwoven with both context and content in these relationships. Thus, to try to gain knowledge of all things would to try to forge a priviledged position with respect to all things--domination.
These relationships are mediated by language, according to Small and Bateson--but it usually a language of gesture, rather than of words. Gestures are multivalent, complex, and often contradictory forms of communication, all at once. But in communicating gestures, the end parties of the relationship (relata) are not named--they are taken for granted. Thus what is gestured is the relation itself--an "affirmative" and "here-and-now" form of communication. Gestures are iconic, and yet still reflect a choice of representations. Drawing on the work of American philosopher Mark Johnson--Small elucidates Bateson's gestural language in terms of what Johnson calls 'metaphorical thinking."----and what Small winds up with ultimately is a somatic theory of knowledge--a bodily epistemology, if you will.
Thus, music we like makes us feel good in that it enacts relationships we belong in. We may also feel bad if we sense the illusory nature of those relationships. We may feel distant or upset if the relationships evoked are not what's "really going on" or are not ones we fit or belong in. But the experience of the relationship belongs more to the world of gestural paralanguage, rather then discursive verbalness. So words cannot fully express it. But nor is it simply emotive.
According to Small, there is no such thing as "absolute music"--musical works that exist solely to be contemplated aesthetically and abstractly. To take part is a musical work, either as performer, listerner, or janitor, is to take part in a dramatic representation of personal relationships, which is no less real for having numbers for a title or not having a written libretto. The distinction between music and that evoked by the music -"extra-musical" is thus collapsed--dramatic meanings taken from the piece are part of the musical meaning of the musicking.
The brilliance of this book lies in its use of the philosophy of somatic and ritual knowledge as productivity, and an willingness to untangle the sociocultural threads that enmesh any musical performance. This rightly deemphasizes musical emotivism and formalism, and allows us instead to examine the cultural phenomenology that is at work in any act(s) of musicking. However, the connections between emotion and gesture in the book are less than fully elaborated, and without that it is difficult to know precisely how to handle the emotions that are evoked in musicking, and so attempting to structure the relationships between emotions and bodily knowledge becomes confusing.
Book Description
The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that will serve as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures-not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers from music, anthropology, sociology, and the related fields, the book both defines the field-i.e., "What is the relation between music and culture?"-and then presents case studies of particular issues in world musics. This book would serve as an introductory textbook for the cultural study of music, an area that is increasingly being taught at the upper-level undergraduate and graduate level. Plus it would appeal to scholars in all areas of music, reflecting the latest and most up to date thinking on the complex issues surrounding how music and culture interrelate.
Customer Reviews:
excellent stuff!.......2006-08-07
for some this book is very tough (see other reviews), but I found it startlingly good - well edited, insightful and covering a wide range of materials ad concepts in the field. It's interetsing that those who don't like it are usually those who also don't like the critical turn in musicology. Choose your sides!!!
what a nightmare!!.......2006-05-19
This book was one of the worst reading experiences I've had. I can't imagine how the information in this book could be useful in any way. The contributors are long-winded and never really say anything substantial, probably due to poor editing. STAY AWAY!!
Superficial, poorly edited, stale........2005-04-15
The postgraduate seminar that I take part in choose this text because we hoped that it would offer a taste of various aspects of the cultural study of music that we weren't already familiar with, we hoped that it would make a good starting point for interesting discussions on issues in contemporary music and musicology. We were wrong! This book is superficial at best. A large part of every discussion was spent complaining about the poor quality of the scholarship or the hatchet job the editors have obviously done on the articles. Most of the ideas in this book are stale and much better discussions occur in other publications. It's disappointing to see authors of Lawrence Kramer's quality in a collection this bad, his was one of many articles in which simple ideas became confusing because of poor editing. This attempt to make musicology bite size fails miserably. The only useful thing about this collection is the list of further reading at the end of each article.
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- entertaining
- Light Reading
- A top pick not only for fans of Judy Garland
- Better than 5 stars!!!!!!!!!!!
- Garland, Hudson, and...
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Under the Rainbow: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson and My Life in Old Hollywood
John Carlyle
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
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Hollywood Diary
ASIN: 0786718536 |
Book Description
Actor John Carlyle got his big break in 1954. New to Hollywood, the twenty-three-year-old Carlyle was cast as the assistant director of the movie-within-a movie in George Cukor’s A Star is Born. Although Carlyle’s scene was later cut from the film — and his star status subsequently never materialized — the job brought him in touch with Judy Garland, who up until her death fifteen years later was Carlyle’s friend and sometime lover.
Under the Rainbow: tells the story of this rocky but beloved relationship. No longer the great star who first enthralled Carlyle as an adolescent, Garland — like many former headliners in the 1960s — lived an often desperate, hand-to-mouth existence that was eased only by pills and liquor. She turned to Carlyle for support, even with the hope of marrying the openly gay actor. He politely declined the opportunity of matrimony, but remained constant in his adoration of the star for the rest of his life.
The author takes us on a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of gay Hollywood, with an intimate, often hilarious, star-studded memoir of the decline and end of old Hollywood.
Customer Reviews:
entertaining.......2007-05-10
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. John Carlyle lived a fascinating life. Although the info here about Judy Garland included no big surprises
for me, I enjoyed reading about her by somebody who was there for both the good and the bad times covered here.
Light Reading.......2007-04-03
John Carlyle was a lifelong "wannabe" in Hollywood. He was hopelessly smitten with Judy Garland from his youth, and only a bit less smitten with Joan Fontane. Eventually he apparently became close to Judy for a relatively short time. And he knew lots of people in the Hollywood scene of the 50's, 60's and 70's. But his memoir about these actors, producers, directors and agents is flawed by fuzzy writing and perhaps fuzzy memory. People in his circle DID drink a lot and do lots of drugs in those days. Light reading for anybody inerested in the movie industry of the last half of the 20th Century.
A top pick not only for fans of Judy Garland.......2007-02-08
Author John Carlyle isn't just a researcher doing yet another Hollywood expose: his UNDER THE RAINBOW: AN INTIMATE MEMOIR OF JUDY GARLAND, ROCK HUDSON & MY LIFE IN OLD HOLLYWOOD comes from an insider who was Judy Garland's on/off lover, and who tells of his life with her and encounters with her contemporaries. UNDER THE RAINBOW recreates the atmosphere, involvements and drama of the Hollywood of the 1950s, 60s and 70s: as such it's a top pick not only for fans of Judy Garland, but for broader audiences and library collections interested in Hollywood history and culture as a whole.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Better than 5 stars!!!!!!!!!!!.......2006-12-30
Excellent, thoroughly enjoyable book. A shame Mr. Carlyle did not live to see publication of his memoirs. I truly hated putting down this book. When I came to the last chapter I set the book aside and forced myself to not finish the read, as I knew I would miss his tales. Even sans the Garland anecdotes, Mr. Carlyle's life was fascinating reading; however, the one odd note is Joan Fontaine's attitude throughout. That girl needs to relax! A delightfully bitter-sweet story. Bravo, Mr. Carlyle, for a life well lived!
Garland, Hudson, and..........2006-12-24
Carlyle, John, "UNDER THE RAINBOW: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson & My Life in Old Hollywood".
Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2006.
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
Due out October 16 is a book that is going to be met with a great deal of controversy and welcomed lovingly at the same time. I was very surprised to find it in a shipment of new books sent to me by Betsy Steve at Carroll and Graf. The name alone brings back memories of two gay icons who are no longer with us. "Under the Rainbow" is a memoir dealing with the last ten years of Judy Garland's life as well as what was the beginning of the fall of Hollywood
Most of us are well aware of what an icon Garland has been to us. She was a survivor, she made it through drugs and depression, a life and career that soared and hit rock bottom more than once, a series of unsuccessful marriages but above it all she was "our Judy". There are those that say her apparent suicide and subsequent funeral were either indirect or even direct causes for the Stonewall riots which was the beginning of the gay liberation movement.
For the final decade of her life she had one constant companion and confidant, John Carlyle, who was an openly gay man. He was with as she lost herself to booze and drugs and faded out of the limelight. Gone was the Dorothy of "The Wizard of Oz" and in her place was a woman who had in many ways relinquished the control of her life. At the same Hollywood began its slow decline. Carlyle told of the Hollywood that once was the city of "glitz and glitter" and shows the skeleton of a town where gay men lived their lives in closets. At that time there was a king maker for the young and beautiful men who came to Hollywood looking for that lucky break into the movies. Henry Willson, who is also the subject of a new biography, created the personae of many of the macho men of the golden age of Hollywood. He created Rock Hudson and he created John Carlyle. In 1954 when Willson "discovered" Carlyle who was a mere 23 years old the homosexual underground of `Tinsel town" was hush hush. Willson had him cast as an assistant director in the classic "A Star is Born". Even though the scene never made it to the final cut, Carlyle met Garland and the two began a friendship which lasted until her death. He was more than just a friend; he was occasionally her lover as well. Garland seemed to have had a penchant for gay men and even went as far as marrying one.
Garland's and Carlyle's relationship mirrored Judy's life--rocky and uncertain. In the 1960s she lost much of her box office power and her star quality and lived a lifestyle we shudder to think about. She was desperate and lonesome and even tried to marry Carlyle who was not interested in that kind of arrangement. Yet he stayed her dear friend throughout.
This book is just as much about gay Hollywood of the period. He tells of his sexual liaisons with Marlon Brando and with James Dean, He was friendly with Rock Hudson and Raymond Burr and tells of their double dates and he relates how Montgomery Clift sunk into drink and despair. His female friends included the legendary Mae West as well as Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr and Joan Fontaine. He tells secrets and exposes people and it is so much fun reading this book. A great piece of literature it is not, a wonderful read it is.
It is somewhat sad to look at the Hollywood of today and compare it to the Hollywood that was. But Carlyle gives us a chance to experience all of the glamour and all of the scandal. Skillfully written and easy to read, once you start you will not want to stop. I haven't ha this much fun with a book in a long, long time.
Book Description
This powerful study shows how America's biggest export, rock and roll, became a major influence in Mexican politics, society, and culture. From the arrival of Elvis in Mexico during the 1950s to the emergence of a full-blown counterculture movement by the late 1960s, Eric Zolov uses rock and roll to illuminate Mexican history through these charged decades and into the 1970s. This fascinating narrative traces the rechanneling of youth energies away from political protest in the wake of the 1968 student movement and into counterculture rebellion, known as La Onda (The Wave). Refried Elvis accounts for the events of 1968 and their aftermath by revealing a mounting crisis of patriarchal values, linked both to the experience of modernization during the 1950s and 1960s and to the limits of cultural nationalism as promoted by a one-party state.
Through an engrossing analysis of music and film, as well as fanzines, newspapers, government documents, company reports, and numerous interviews, Zolov shows how rock music culture became a volatile commodity force, whose production and consumption strategies were shaped by intellectuals, state agencies, transnational and local capital, musicians, and fans alike. More than a history of Mexican rock and roll, Zolov's study demonstrates the politicized nature of culture under authoritarianism, and offers a nuanced discussion of the effects of cultural imperialism that deepens our understanding of gender relations, social hierarchies, and the very meanings of national identity in a transnational era.
Customer Reviews:
Very Thorough!.......2007-05-18
This scholarly and well-researched book reveals and analyzes the sources and influences in the development of Mexican counterculture, especially in relation to rock music. It thoroughly covers areas such as the influence of music from the USA, resistance to perceived "musical imperialism", concerts, the crackdown on rock, activities of record companies in Mexico, challenges to traditional social structures, foreign hippies in Mexico, and the societal reception of the changes brought about by the counterculture.
Mr. Zolov does a fine job of bringing to light the tensions, contradictions, and complexities involved. He brings together a lot of information that is not widely known. I feel this is a compelling book and worth a read for anyone who is interested in 1960s counterculture, Latin American youth movements, or the dynamics of the music industry in Latin America.
Book Description
This pathbreaking work reveals the pivotal role of music--musical works and musical culture--in debates about society, self, and culture that forged European modernity through the "long nineteenth century." Michael Steinberg argues that, from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, music not only reflected but also embodied modern subjectivity as it increasingly engaged and criticized old regimes of power, belief, and representation. His purview ranges from Mozart to Mahler, and from the sacred to the secular, including opera as well as symphonic and solo instrumental music.
Defining subjectivity as the experience rather than the position of the "I," Steinberg argues that music's embodiment of subjectivity involved its apparent capacity to "listen" to itself, its past, its desires. Nineteenth-century music, in particular music from a north German Protestant sphere, inspired introspection in a way that the music and art of previous periods, notably the Catholic baroque with its emphasis on the visual, did not.
The book analyzes musical subjectivity initially from Mozart through Mendelssohn, then seeks it, in its central chapter, in those aspects of Wagner that contradict his own ideological imperialism, before finally uncovering its survival in the post-Wagnerian recovery from musical and other ideologies.
Engagingly written yet theoretically sophisticated, Listening to Reason represents a startlingly original corrective to cultural history's long-standing inhibition to engage with music while presenting a powerful alternative vision of the modern.
Customer Reviews:
mild.......2007-03-21
The book consists of a lot of empty verbiage at times mixed with a few insights.
Amazon.com
No small themes for William McNeill, a writer of big, sweeping books, from The Rise of the West and Plagues and Peoples to the modestly titled--and wonderful--History of the World. Here McNeill turns his attention to the role of synchronized movement in human societies, whether in mass political rallies, the muscular bonding of military drills, or dances staged in ballrooms or mosh pits. Such motions, McNeill tells us, are "far older than language, and critically important in human history." Ranging from the Paleolithic to modern times, McNeill turns up unusual nuggets from the past: the Christian Church's abandonment of sacred dances in the 4th century, dances that survive now in the sign of the cross; and Adolf Hitler borrowing fight songs from American universities to solidify the nascent National Socialist movement.
Book Description
Could something as simple and seemingly natural as falling into step have marked us for evolutionary success? In Keeping Together in Time one of the most widely read and respected historians in America pursues the possibility that coordinated rhythmic movement--and the shared feelings it evokes--has been a powerful force in holding human groups together. As he has done for historical phenomena as diverse as warfare, plague, and the pursuit of power, William H. McNeill brings a dazzling breadth and depth of knowledge to his study of dance and drill in human history. From the records of distant and ancient peoples to the latest findings of the life sciences, he discovers evidence that rhythmic movement has played a profound role in creating and sustaining human communities. The behavior of chimpanzees, festival village dances, the close-order drill of early modern Europe, the ecstatic dance-trances of shamans and dervishes, the goose-stepping Nazi formations, the morning exercises of factory workers in Japan--all these and many more figure in the bold picture McNeill draws. A sense of community is the key, and shared movement, whether dance or military drill, is its mainspring. McNeill focuses on the visceral and emotional sensations such movement arouses, particularly the euphoric fellow-feeling he calls "muscular bonding." These sensations, he suggests, endow groups with a capacity for cooperation, which in turn improves their chance of survival.
A tour de force of imagination and scholarship, Keeping Together in Time reveals the muscular, rhythmic dimension of human solidarity. Its lessons will serve us well as we contemplate the future of the human community and of our various local communities.
Customer Reviews:
An Original and Stimulating Hypothesis.......2006-10-14
This absorbing work exposes an immense gap in the literature about and our understanding of the past, and offers a huge canvas for further speculation. Highly recommended!
Dancing as the Engine of Human History.......1999-09-09
If you are one of those people who reads in terms of things subversive or hegemonic, you will not like this book, because it so completely accepts the sort of mechanized vision of the universe so common to our age. However, if one should happen to be free of that particular affliction, then this is a fairly interesting book, for not only is it readable, rare for an academic book, but it also has something to say about human history. Mr. McNeill's thesis is that the interaction between music and dancing has had a very much greater impact on human history than has heretofore been realized, and many of his speculations are well worth pondering. For students of dance, and what is perhaps now becoming a legitimate line of academic query, a subject that may someday become known as "kinesthetics," this book is a must-read. A recent book from France about the French use of church bells appears to echo many of the themes developed here, which is to say that this book may well be looked back upon as an important first step. Of course, to a politically-minded critic, such work is utterly reactionary, and perhaps it is an escape into a fantasy of other times and places, and certainly the almost uncritical way in which McNeill accepts the current Darwinistic world view is disturbing, yet nevertheless there is much to be gained here. The long analysis of the impact of close order drill on European armies is alone work of the first water, of interest to anyone working on not just European political history, but also students of European imperialism. If this book is understood aright, much of our current thought is going to have to be revised.
Book Description
Since it first emerged from Britain’s punk-rock scene in the late 1970s, goth subculture has haunted postmodern culture and society, reinventing itself inside and against the mainstream. Goth: Undead Subculture is the first collection of scholarly essays devoted to this enduring yet little examined cultural phenomenon. Twenty-three essays from various disciplines explore the music, cinema, television, fashion, literature, aesthetics, and fandoms associated with the subculture. They examine goth’s many dimensionsâincluding its melancholy, androgyny, spirituality, and perversityâand take readers inside locations in Los Angeles, Austin, Leeds, London, Buffalo, New York City, and Sydney. A number of the contributors are or have been participants in the subculture, and several draw on their own experiences.
The volume’s editors provide a rich history of goth, describing its play of resistance and consumerism; its impact on class, race, and gender; and its distinctive features as an âundeadâ subculture in light of post-subculture studies and other critical approaches. The essays include an interview with the distinguished fashion historian Valerie Steele; analyses of novels by Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Nick Cave; discussions of goths on the Internet; and readings of iconic goth texts from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to James O’Barr’s graphic novel The Crow. Other essays focus on gothic music, including seminal precursors such as Joy Division and David Bowie, and goth-influenced performers such as the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, and Marilyn Manson. Gothic sexuality is explored in multiple ways, the subjects ranging from the San Francisco queercore scene of the 1980s to the increasing influence of fetishism and fetish play. Together these essays demonstrate that while its participants are often middle-class suburbanites, goth blurs normalizing boundaries even as it appears as an everlasting shadow of late capitalism.
Contributors: Heather Arnet, Michael Bibby, Jessica Burstein, Angel M. Butts, Michael du Plessis, Jason Friedman, Nancy Gagnier, Ken Gelder, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Joshua Gunn, Trevor Holmes, Paul Hodkinson, David Lenson, Robert Markley, Mark Nowak, Anna Powell, Kristen Schilt, Rebecca Schraffenberger, David Shumway, Carol Siegel, Catherine Spooner, Lauren Stasiak, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Customer Reviews:
Through The Glass Darkly.......2007-08-05
A reviewer above wondered how self proclaimed Goths might take this book and some of the views on Goths it expounds. As an old schooler, I completely welcome it. I think resistance to a anyone taking a dead on 20/20 look at any subculture or scene (which as the book points out are not the same) is usually brought about by some older members out of a certain sense of defensiveness. Similar to the reaction parents might have of someone critical of their baby. There is now and always has been a certain elitist (Gother than thou) mindset to some members of the community, and as they tend to be quite vocal, I think those outside the community perceive us all as being that way. Which is a shame as one of the earliest, cardinal trademarks of a Goth was someone who could laugh at themselves.
I loved the book. I loved that fact that it hoisted some dearly held beliefs on their own petards. The look at commercialism and Goth so cracked me up. It's true, we are all of us, in love with our baubles. While many may decry this fact it is the truth. The look at how the gender blurring of men comes at the expense of women I found a bit of a reach but to each their own. I particularly loved the take on gothic literature allowing young women to explore the alternative worlds of sexuality (fetishism, B+D, bisexuality) as it really rang true to me as someone who was there.
Good for history and trivia.......2007-07-17
Goth: Undead Subculture is a voluminous collection of essays commenting on the subculture, mostly by academics, though there are a few essays written mainly from the point of view of self-identified goths. It made for interesting reading for someone who's high-school experience with goth can be summed up by the t-shirt slogan "I'd be goth but I can't afford to shop at Hot Topic." The discussions of "authenticity" are fun to read from that point of view. The academics seem to aspire to say something profound, but never do, and when the ooze reverence for the pseudo-intellectuals that dominate literary criticism, their writing can be painful. However, as collectors of history and cultural trivia, the academics do quite well, and that's really what makes the book worthwhile. If you're up for 400+ pages of cultural infosnacks, the book is worthwhile (though I must admit I didn't buy it, and only checked it out from the library because it was sitting in the "new arrivals" bin).
Gothic Scholarship Discovers Goth.......2007-07-05
The best way of tackling a subject that sprawls across disparate academic disciplines is to engage the services of a collection of experts in the fields involved. Previous studies of Gothic have been either scattergun takes on the whole genre by generalists, or focused investigations of this or that topic, usually literature. Goth: Undead Subculture is the first to break the trend and, even more admirably, actually tries to do so from the viewpoint of the Goth-on-the-dancefloor.
Of course, what you end up with is academics - mostly, there is the occasional exception - discussing their favoured topics, but a good few of them could be characterised, as Trevor Holmes so wonderfully puts it, as `a goth-identified subject [with] an interest in things horrific and gloomy, in a postromantic decadent aesthetic overdetermined by punk, in embodiment through gender transitivity'. There's a certain amount of that breathy Stateside academic-speak, but in actual fact most of the essays in this collection sparkle a good deal. In fact, Trevor Holmes's is a good instance of the collision between the personal and the subcultural with his account of life as, er, a professional dancer cavorting gothically in an LA gay club, morphing into a debate on the slipperiness of gothic gender generally. Kristen Shilt writes a lovely account of the Austin Faerielanders in their `liminal enclave', and Rebecca Schraffenberger owns up to her own Goth development.
Throughout the book there seem to be two twin and allied efforts which set it apart from anything attempted before. Firstly, there's a serious intention to think, and discover where possible, exactly how `gothic' cultural products function in the Goth community, how they are used and processed in sifting and developing a sense of identity. Secondly, there's an openness to considering in that task all sorts of cultural products. We expect such interdisciplinary boldness of Catherine Spooner, also represented in the book (albeit by an old essay), but everyone has a go. Michael Bibby, for example, is a professor of English, but has a go at analysing the role of the post-punk band Joy Division in formulating early Goth, looking at their work (lyrics, production, music), stage performances, and visual image promoted through album artwork. This is more than he has any right to know about.
This is marvellous, if you can do the work of ploughing through the four hundred intimidating pages. There is nothing that can really do justice to the fissiparous and contradictory beauty of modern Goth, but this book does better than anything to date. My only wonder is whether Goths themselves will welcome such microscopic analysis; at least it comes not-entirely from the outside.
Books:
- Three Great Orchestral Works in Full Score: Prelude A L'Apres-Midi D'Un Faune, Nocturnes, La Mer (Dover Orchestral Scores)
- Transforming Stress: The Heartmath Solution For Relieving Worry, Fatigue, And Tension
- Voices from Legendary Times: We Are a Bridge Between Past and Future
- What the Dead Know: A Novel
- A Century of Ballads, 1810-1910
- A History of Western Music
- All About Love: New Visions
- All Together Dead (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 7)
- Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America Includes CD/DVD (American Musicspheres)
- Basic Materials in Music Theory: A Programed Course (11th Edition)
Books Index
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